


glass walls

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-13 01:57:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15353682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: Prompt: Mulder and Scully imprisoned for an undetermined length of time in next door soundproof cells, separated by a pane of glass. They can see but not hear or touch each other.





	1. Chapter 1

They’ve been here for a long time. He used to know how long, mentally ticked off another day in his head every morning, but he lost track somewhere in the fifties. Months, years, he doesn’t know. He wishes he did. **  
**

Scully sits on the other side of the glass. Her hair is long now, tangled and tumbling far past her shoulders. She sits curled up in the corner, close enough that they’d be touching if it weren’t for the wall between them. It’s been so long since he’s heard her voice.

Mulder knows that it’s useless, that they’ve done this so many times that it barely means anything anymore, but he can’t help it. It’s the closest he’s felt to her in so long. He presses his hand against the glass, fingers spread and palm squished, and waits. Wonders if today is the day she finally shrugs him off and lets him sit there stupidly with his hand pressed here.

It’s long minutes before she sees it—she’s sitting with her face pressed almost into her knees—but when she does, she pauses for a second. A slow, sympathetic smile spreads over her face. A sad one. She lifts her hand and presses it to his on the other side of the glass. They’re matched, palm to palm.

There’s no warmth in it, only the smooth chill of glass and the humid feeling of Mulder’s own hand. But he can pretend that there is.

—

They had gone home from work, it had just been a normal day. They’d said goodnight in the parking garage and driven away separately. Mulder had been watching TV on the couch when the lights came, washing over him, blinding him. He couldn’t remember anything after that. But he’d woken up here.

His initial reaction—panic—had only increased when he stumbled to his feet and found Scully feet away from him, curled up fetally on her side. He’d shouted her name, he’d tried to get to her but found the very stable glass wall between them. He’d pounded his hands against the wall, screaming for her again and again, threatening their captors (assuming, at the time, that they could hear him). But Scully hadn’t heard. Hadn’t even woken up until much later. She’d stared at him in confusion, maybe even in fear, when she saw him, eyes wide and worried and both hands pressed to the glass like a kid at the aquarium. She said his name, but he couldn’t hear her. Could only see the movement her lips. And that was when they realized that they couldn’t hear each other.

And so. That is how they have been ever since.

They’ve tried to escape, of course, but they’ve had little luck. Their captors, whoever or whatever they are, are skilled at making prisons. Skilled at torture. They haven’t heard each other in months, haven’t touched each other in months. They can only watch, only look at each other like animals in the zoo. Mouth things at each other through the thick glass.

He misses her voice so much. He misses arguing with her, the sharp, stern sound when she was annoyed or when he was wrong. He misses bumping into her in the hall or when they had to move around the desk, misses his hand at the small of her back or her arms around the after one of them was hurt. He imagines hugging her sometimes, her warmth in his arms. Imagines touching her again.

They sit together against the wall a lot, right next to each other. Mulder’s knee against the glass, Scully’s head and shoulder. Sometimes they look at each other, try to have a conversation through the glass; sometimes, they just sit. They fall asleep there sometimes instead of picking themselves up and moving to their beds on the opposite sides of the rooms. They can still see each other there, but it is not enough.

Mulder wishes he was here alone, sometimes, if only because having this torture inflicted on Scully as well feels like too much. He can’t completely wish that, because he feels like Scully’s company is all that’s keeping him sane. But he feels like this is a different type of insanity, a different type isolation. He’d do anything to feel her, to hear her, to be anywhere else.

—

They hadn’t tried to touch very much in the first week or two. Once the initial shock wore off, they spent most of their time trying to escape. Trying to figure out a way out. Scully is stronger than he is, and she remains detached, staunch and strong where he is weak. They’d kept it together that first week or two, held back and tried to make plans through the glass, offered each other reassuring smiles when they felt up to it.

Mulder can’t remember how it started. He thinks one of them broke down, but he honestly can’t recall who; they’ve both broken down a lot lately. But the other had pressed their hand to the glass in an attempt at comfort. And after that, they’ve never stopped. It’s their attempt at a tradition, at keeping themselves going. The way they used to take each other’s hands, sometimes, if things got hard.

Sometimes, they’ll get distant. Scully won’t get out of bed or Mulder will get angry and resentful, pacing around his cell like a caged tiger. It happens. But they usually fall right back into their habits. They have to; they are all each other has.

—

Scully is asleep against the glass one day, her head bent and her hair covering her face. Curled into the corner. Mulder is half-asleep, his head resting against an opposite wall so that he can watch her sleep. She looks small, at least as small as he feels, crammed into this little room. He can see her breathing, and it helps. _She’s alive_ , he reminds himself. _You’re alive. You’re gonna be okay._  He has to imagine some kind of future where they get out of here, where they can get back to their everyday lives. Where things are normal once again.

—

He used to think there might be other people here. That maybe his sister was here. He used to think he could find answers here, look the things that took away his sister in the face, bargain himself for Scully’s freedom. He used to think.

They get taken away, sometimes. Once in a blue moon. For experiments, he thinks, but he doesn’t know for sure because neither of them can remember anything after. He certainly can’t, and when Scully got back the first time within a few hours of being taken, he shot her concerned, questioning looks, drew an invisible question mark on the glass with his fingertip. She’d shaken her head no. And that was that.

They play a twisted version of charades sometimes, trying to communicate without having to lip read. It never works out well, but it’s usually a good method of cheering themselves up. Scully usually laughs herself silly at Mulder’s attempts to act out what he wants to say. He wishes they had something to write with; they’re bored to the point where he bets the wall would be so covered in words that they wouldn’t even be able to see each other anymore if they had something to write with.

One day, they’re sitting against the walls adjacent to their shared one, their knees and feet leaning against the glass one. And Scully, bent over so her ribs are against her legs and her cheek is against the wall, says or mouths something several times. It takes a while, but Mulder finally understands it: _Tell me a story._

He smiles a little, wants to laugh or cry (he isn’t sure which). “You won’t understand it,” he says, slowly. “Too many words.

She shrugs, shakes her head.  _Tell me anyway,_  she says.

He tells a story about them. He talks about a case they worked, once, and then another, and then another. He tells stories of him and Samantha as children, stories from his college days, more stories about the two of them. He talks, his voice echoing and rattling around the empty room, and he’s probably going too fast, and it should feel silly but it doesn’t, not with Scully’s face pressed up against the glass, watching his mouth move.

—

“I miss you. I miss you so much, it’s hard to breathe.”

_You have to sneeze?_

“No.” He shakes his head, feeling silly. Miscommunications happen a lot, since neither of them are skilled lip readers, but it still irritates him every time. “Never mind. It’s okay,” he adds, being sure to speak slowly.

Scully shakes her head back, her eyes serious.  _I miss you, too,_  she says.

—

It’s several minutes before he notices Scully motioning to him from the other side of the wall. Her eyes are wide and wet and she looks vulnerable, vulnerable in a way that’s impossible to hide. She presses her hand against the wall, as if a question.

He goes over immediately, matches palms with her once again. Tries to offer her a smile, like everything is going to be okay. Scully shuts her eyes, her chin trembling, and the next thing Mulder knows, her forehead is pressed to the wall. Something they used to do a long time ago. She’s shaking, quivering, and he wants to kiss her, hold her, just tell her how he feels when she is able to hear it. He presses his forehead on the other side, their palms together and their foreheads together, and it almost, almost feels like enough.

It’s a few seconds before he sees her mouth moving, a few more before he can understand what she is saying, but his stomach twists when he realizes what he is, his eyes fill with tears. She is saying, _I love you,_  a tear dripping down her face, her eyes staring straight into his.

His chest clenches, his heart thumps like a nervous rabbit. He lifts the hand that’s not against his to touch the glass in front of her face, gently, with the tips of his fingers. “I love you,” he says, and it sounds strange and sad in all this silence, but he says it again. “I love you, Scully.”

She closes her eyes again, presses her face against the wall so hard that her tears leave smudges on the glass. She opens her eyes again and offers him a wobbly smile. _I love you,_  she says again, and he says it back, and they stand like that for a long time.

—

He wakes up one morning, and she is gone. This is unsurprisingly the thing that breaks him.

At first, he convinces himself that she’s not really gone, that she’s just gone into the little room off to the side they have for a bathroom. (They’ll go in there, sometimes, if they’ve fought, but they were happy last night, he’d thought, they’d fallen asleep sitting together against the glass…) And then he convinces himself that she must’ve fallen down in there, she’s hurt, sick, malnourished… He smacks his palm against the glass and calls her name over and over again even though he knows she can’t hear. The door to her bathroom is open, so he walks along the wall, cranes his neck to see inside. He can’t see the whole room, but he can see enough: she isn’t there. He tries to convince himself, for a little while, that they’ve just taken her for experiments and she’ll be right back, but after hours alone, it is clear that’s not what happened.

He goes a little crazy. He shouts, screams at the cameras he knows must be somewhere in the cell. He demands to know where she is. He curses their captors, threatens them if they do anything to hurt her. He screams her name until his throat is raw. Being essential isolated in a soundproof room for months cannot do good things to your sanity, and being truly alone is enough to do it. He shouts, he cries, he vomits a little in the sink of his bathroom because he can barely keep down food anymore. He curls up on his side on the bed, his back aching from sleeping on the floor so much, and watches her room. It’s too empty now, still stunningly neat because Scully keeps it that way. He aches to see her there, lying on her own bed, looking at him through the glass. He’d thought not being able to hear or touch her was bad, but this is much, much worse.

It’s days, he thinks, that he’s awake. Weeks with Scully gone. He drifts in and out of sleep, in and out of furious rants and demands to let him see her. He doesn’t know what else to do. He tries to stay awake.

He falls back asleep at some point, shivering from the cold on top of the mattress, trying his hardest not to fall asleep because he’s still watching her room. Still hoping that she’s going to come back.

—

When he wakes up, he thinks he might still be asleep. Because there is Scully, on the wrong side of the wall, lying asleep or unconscious on his floor. Arms wrapped around herself. Her image not distorted by the glass.

His breath catches in his throat for a minute, not entirely sure that this is real. He pulls himself up off of the bed gingerly, trying not to break the spell. “Scully?” he whispers.

She must’ve been asleep because she stirs at that, opens her eyes and tries to sit up. When she sees him, her eyes widen in confused disbelief and she blinks foggily at him. “Mulder?” she whispers, and every inch of her voice is a blessing.

They surge towards each other, Mulder stumbling, Scully scrambling clumsily to her feet. He tries to scoop her up, to hold her close, but he’s not nearly as strong as he used to be, and they both fall to the ground. He’s ready to apologize but she’s already kissing him, hard and desperate and sloppy, her hands knotted in his hair. His hands slide over her hips, her back, her legs, her hair; she’s kissing him again and again, her mouth open over his, her nose crushed up against his. “Mulder,” she’s saying, “Mulder, Mulder,” and the sound of her voice is the best sound in the world.

He says her name too, low and throaty, “Scully,” he whispers, “Scully,” and he’s holding onto her so tightly, it’s been so long since he touched her.

She pulls away from his mouth and buries her face in his neck, burrowing into him. “God, I missed you,” she chokes out.

“I missed you, too,” he says, hauling her closer with fistfuls of her shirt. “Jesus, Scully, I thought I’d never see you again. When I woke up and saw you gone…”

“I’m here,” says Scully, rubbing her nose into his neck. “God, and you’re here, Mulder.” She kisses the underside of his chin. “No more goddamn wall between us.”

“Goddamn fucking wall,” he agrees, kissing the side of her head. They lie together like that, arms tight around each other, for a long time.

Scully’s cheek presses against his shoulder, her weight heavy and relieving in his arms. “I missed you, Mulder,” she whispers. “But I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired.” She yawns, pushing her forehead against him like a needy cat.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. He’s tired, too, he realizes, the effort of lifting Scully heavy in his bones. “We can rest. It’s okay.” He’s not going to let go. If he doesn’t let go, they can’t separate them without waking them up. He slumps against the floor, Scully in his arms, his muscles aching from the hardness of the floor. “I’ve got you,” he says. “It’s okay.”

Her arms are still tight around his neck, her hands against the back of his head; they shift tiredly on the floor so that they’re more comfortable. Scully wraps herself around him tighter. “I’ve got you, too,” she says in a fierce voice that makes Mulder shiver. Hearing her, touching her, it all feels like a delicacy.

There are so many things he wants to say, but he’s so tired. But they have time. He really believes they have time.

He holds Scully close, a hand protectively over her head, and he lets himself fall asleep, cheek pressed to the cold, dirty floor.

—

When he wakes up, she is gone. He doesn’t know how they managed to separate them, but he knows that he must’ve overestimated himself. He feels stupid, childish for falling asleep. He should’ve known, he should’ve fucking expected this.

When he opens his eyes, she is there. But he cannot touch her anymore. Her figure is distorted again, like they’re underwater. They’re lying face to face, and the wall is between them again.

He wants to scream, to shout his protests to the heavens, but he is too weak, exhaustion wringing out every part of his being. He can’t do anything, can barely even move. So he just lies there and watches her sleep. He tells himself that she is alive and that should be enough, but it’s not. Not when he got to touch her, hold her again.

When Scully wakes up, she is confused first, and then furious. Then sad. And then helpless and confused again. Her eyes are wide. A tear trickles down her face. She says his name, but he can’t hear it.

Mulder reaches out and touches a fingertip to the glass. It’s small, but it’s all he can do. All he can manage.

Scully doesn’t smile, because there’s nothing to smile about. But she lifts her finger and presses the tip against his. The glass smudges, just a little.

It is all they can do, but it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. It’s something, but it’s not enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since a sequel was widely requested, i had to do it. they deserve some kind of a happy ending.

They took Scully away and brought her back shortly after, and put her, briefly, in Mulder's cell before separating them again. They take Mulder away and They don't bring him back. She should see it coming, but she doesn't. 

There are smudgey handprints on the glass wall from all the times they'd pressed their palms together like they were reenacting a scene from _ Tarzan _ , and Scully wants to cry when she sees it. She's cried too often since they've been brought here, and she hates it, but it's too hard not to. When she sees the empty shell of Mulder's room and realizes They've taken him away from her, when she can still feel his hands along her back, his mouth under hers. She wants to scream, to curse, but she forces herself not to. She cries, briefly, into the palms of her hands, and that's all she allows herself. She wants to hurt their invisible captors, to scream at Them, to force them to bring Mulder back or to let them go, but she forces herself to wait. Splashes the grimy water from the sink on her face and composes herself. 

She wants to get out of here, but the problem is that she has no idea how. The glass is unbreakable, there are no doors in her morbid little cell, and there are no captors to negotiate with. Or if there are, she has no idea who or what They are. She doesn't know where she goes when They take her; They always remove those memories, the same blank space she remembers from her own abduction. They've taken so much from her, and now They've taken Mulder. She wants to kill Them, wherever They are. 

She hasn't done it since they've arrived, but she thinks it's worth a try as much as anything else. She paces every inch of the room, crawls over the floor, slides under the bed and reaches behind the toilet and sink, looking for anything she can use. She could take apart the toilet, of course, but who knows if they're watching her. And it's not like she can use it on people she can't see. 

She finds nothing. She feels the disappointment in the pit of her chest: crushing. She doesn't know what the hell to do, but she has to do  _ something _ , because it's Mulder, they took Mulder, and God knows what They're doing to him. She curls up in a ball in her usual spot, weak and exhausted from the effort, presses her face against her knees. She can feel the coldness of the glass through her ratty shirt. She'd thought waking up on the opposite sides of the glass again after being able to touch—even though she was  _ sure  _ she hadn't let go of him all night—was the worst. But this… this is the worst. Because he's gone and it's been hours and They haven't brought him back. And she is alone. 

Scully rests her cheek against the glass, against a smudged, fading handprint. She tries to tell herself that it hasn't even been a day yet, that They might bring him back while she's asleep and it'll all be okay. They'll still be trapped here, but it'll be okay if they bring him back.

\---

Days pass. Days pass, and They do not bring Mulder back. 

Scully is almost sick, wondering what They've done to him, wondering if he's dead and she couldn't save him and she'll never see him again. She wants to scream, she wants to vomit, she's ready to beg. She presses herself against the edge of her cell and tries to see out, find anything that will help her. She sees nothing: an endless hallway with blank, gray walls. She takes apart the toilet to fashion something of a weapon that she can hide under her shirt, but she thinks that there is no chance that They haven't seen her doing this, that They aren't watching her through some kind of camera, and besides, she isn't sure when she'd ever get to use it. Even if they take her again, there's no guarantee that she will be able to fight back; she doesn't know what they do to her. She tries to  _ break  _ the wall with a pipe from the toilet, but it remains frustratingly shatterproof. She breaks down, screams out of pure frustration and fury because she knows that no one can hear her. Even Mulder never could because of that goddamn glass wall. She collapses to the ground because she's too weak, she needs medical attention and so does Mulder. She wipes cold tears from her cheeks, sitting with her back against the wall. 

She gives up. Stares into the corner of the ceiling where she's almost positive that they have cameras and says, “What the hell do you want from us?” She says, “Where is he? What have you done to him?” She says, “I'll do whatever the hell it takes to get us out of here, just tell me what I have to do.” She says, “Just let me see him, please. I just have to know he's okay.” She says, “I will tear you bastards apart if you hurt him, I swear to God.” She's begging, but she doesn't break; she stares steelily into the potential camera with the strength she still has buried in her core. She barely knows what she is saying, but she knows she has to say it. 

She misses Mulder. She'd give anything for him to be here, even on the other side of that goddamn wall where she can't hear or touch him. She'd wish to be able to touch him, but that seems like too much; she'd take the overly sweet gesture of his palm pressed against the glass. (Mulder was the first one to do that, and it was so eagerly sweet that she almost cried.)

She makes threats and bargains and pleas to the potential camera until she's too tired to do anything anymore. She slides down on her side, her cheek pressed to the shitty mattress. She watches Mulder's empty room, waiting for him to come back. 

\---

Weeks pass, she thinks. It has to be weeks, she is counting. They don't bring Mulder back. 

Scully keeps her makeshift weapon, cold and grimy, tucked under her shirt and into the waistband of her pants, but she never gets a chance to get it. The food is awful but she eats it all, drinks the nasty sink water out of her cupped hands, because she needs every ounce of her strength. She washes as best she can out of the sink, she repeatedly braids her hair back because it's entirely too long to work with now and she can't stand it, she tries to exercise but stops herself before she pushes herself too far. She suddenly has a blank space in the day that she used to fill with trying to talk to Mulder, and she's trying to be productive. To be ready. 

Mulder's room remains startinglingly empty. His bed, his bathroom, his empty floors and walls. The handprints are nearly gone, and it feels harshly appropriate. It gets to the point where Scully can barely look at it; she feels so alone, she can barely breathe. 

She wonders who They were trying to torture when they took Mulder. She thinks that, no matter what their intentions, it has certainly worked. She wants to scream again, scream until her throat goes raw and noiseless.

She lies on the bed, facing the wall because there's no reason to do otherwise. She misses her home, her family, her freedom. She misses her partner. She rests her head against the unclear wall, still cold and unyielding against her forehead. 

“I'll still do anything,” she says softly. “Just let me see him. I'll do whatever you want if I know he's okay.”

She doesn't know if They can hear her, if They are even listening. If They are, They say nothing. She wraps her arms and the thin blanket around her and curls up on the thin mattress, shuts her eyes. 

\---

It all happens in a blur, only chunks of the ordeal clear. Maybe their memory-wipers fucked up; she doesn't know. 

She's being pulled or pushed down the hall by invisible hands, invisible captors. She's calling his name, nearly screaming it. She's shouting, “What the fuck have you done to him?” Hunger and weariness and desperation has made her near insane; she's clawing at hands that aren't there, demanding that They let go of her. She says she wants to see Mulder, where's Mulder, They're fucking bastards and They better not have hurt him. And then she hears her voice, muffled and uncertain, calling her name. 

That's all she remembers. That's all she knows. But in the senseless haze that follows, in the murky darkness that she can't quite explain, she knows that she reminds herself of this, over and over again:  _ He's alive.  _

\---

_ She wakes up in a strange place, a strange room with a rickety cot and a gray dirty floor. The last thing she remembers is lying in bed, lights coming up and blinding her before it all went black. She panics initially, flipping over on her side, ready to fight. But the first thing she sees is Mulder, eyes full of fear, both hands pressed to what looks like glass. He's saying her name, it looks like, but she can't hear a thing. “Mulder?” she says, pushing herself up off  the ground and sitting back on her haunches, confused and frightened at the fact that he is  _ here  _ with her. He is mouthing something else now; it takes her a moment to understand it, but it's clearer now:  _ Are you okay?

_ They've been here for a few weeks and it's only getting harder. They have no idea how to get out, they have no idea how long they'll be here, and it's impossible to make any plan of escape when they can't hear each other. Scully's sitting up against the wall, her head in her hands, worn out and defeated, when she sees the shape out of the corner of her eye. It's Mulder's hand, pressed against the glass. He offers her a small, sad, self-deprecating smile. She smiles back, sadly, lifts her palm to match his.  _

_ They're sitting against the wall together, trying to talk through it. They're misunderstanding most of the words they say. Scully doesn't care. She's watching him talk, and she can almost, almost hear the sound of his voice. _

_ They're standing with their foreheads together, their hands together, and she's telling him she loves him. It feels awkward to say it over and over again like this, her bare sentiment echoing through the room, and she's about to stop when he says it back. She almost cries at the raw emotion.  _

_ She wakes up on the floor of Mulder's cell to the sound of him saying her name. They move towards each other in a jerky, heartbeat of a motion, Mulder's arms wrapping convulsively around her, trying to lift her off the ground, and they tumble down together, but she doesn't care. She's already kissing him like the world is ending.  _

_ It's the night before They take Mulder away, and they've already been separated for three days. They're sitting against the wall again, and Scully feels like everything has been drained out of her. Exhausted, defeated. But Mulder is still looking at her like she is everything in the world.  _ I'm going to get you out of here,  _ he says.  _

_ Scully drifts, dreaming.  _

\---

There is another blur of lights. Scully has no idea how long it's been. She drifts, she falls, she fades in and out of consciousness. She stops for a moment to ask herself where the hell she is. 

She wakes up in her own bed. In her own home. She is still dirty and gritty and her hair is too long, so she can tell it wasn't a dream, but still. She is in her bed. It's such a shock that Scully almost feels like it is a dream, sprawled out spread-eagle on the bed with the covers thrown to the end of the mattress.

And then she realizes that it isn't a dream. She's really _ here _ , she can tell because her apartment looks different, half of the room is boxed up in cardboard boxes. The air feels fresher, she can hear the noises of the street instead of the empty silence of her cell. 

Scully sucks in a shocked breath, and sits straight up. She should call an ambulance, call her mother, call the police, but her first thought is Mulder. Did they return Mulder, is he okay, where is he.

She stumbles to her feet, not bothering to stop and change, shower, think. She searches her nearly empty apartment and finds nothing, no sign of him. Barely thinking, she calls a taxi with trembling fingers, with money she found in her bedside table crumpled in her fist, and waits for it out front, shivering in the bitter wind. Tears welling in her eyes. If They didn't return Mulder, she doesn't know what the hell she's going to do. She has to find him, she has to, but she wouldn't even know where to start. 

The taxi driver shoots her a concerned look, but he says nothing. She climbs into the back, thankful for the heat he has blowing. When they were taken, it was summer. The taxi driver asks her where to, and she jumps at the sound of another human’s voice, the same way she had on the phone earlier. After months with hearing nothing but her own voice (and, briefly, Mulder's). She rattles off Mulder's address in a hollow voice. 

The drive there is entirely too long. Scully is exhausted, but she has to see, has to know for sure… She starts to reach for her phone to try Mulder's phone, before she remembers that she doesn't have it, she doesn't have anything. She wipes her eyes with the tips of her fingers and offers up a brief prayer that Mulder will be there. 

The taxi drops her out front, the driver nodding to her. She shoves hair behind her ear and nods back, her heart thudding quickly in her chest. She rides the elevator to the fourth floor, slumping against the wall, her fingers tucked into her armpits. She's so cold. It's such a relief, being able to walk more than a few feet at a time, and she almost cries with the weight of it. 

She realizes only when she is in front of Mulder's door that she doesn't have her keys. But she finds the door unlocked, swinging open at her touch. She steps in cautiously, the floorboard squeaking under her foot. The place is even worse than her place, as empty as Mulder's abandoned cell, and she wants to cry all over again. What if he really isn't here?

And then she comes into the living room and finds Mulder unconscious on the couch. Sees him for the first time in weeks. Her breath catches in her throat; she falls to her knees beside the couch. Reaches out to touch his hair, his cheek with the back of her hand, her bruised knuckles against his skin. “Mulder,” she whispers. 

His eyelids flutter, his mouth twitches. “Scully?” he mumbles muffedly. 

Her eyes well up again; she presses her lips to his overgrown hair, her knuckles stroking the side of his face. 

His eyes flutter open slowly, filling with relief; he lifts a hand to cup the side of her face, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. “Scully,” he murmurs. “Are you okay?”

She nods, rubbing her nose against his forehead. 

He twists gingerly, sitting up a little and wrapping his arm tight around her shoulders. She tucks her head into his neck, tears streaming down her face. “God, I'd thought I lost you,” he says. “I didn't think we'd ever get out…” His voice breaks a little, her hand flat against her back. 

She twines her arms around him, moves with him when he tugs her onto the narrow couch, wraps her legs around him in an attempt to both conserve space. “I thought I'd lost  _ you _ ,” she chokes out. “I had no idea what they'd done to you, Mulder, I thought you were…" She tips her head back and kisses him; his mouth falling open, he rocks her back and forth gently, his hands hard and clinging against her. He ducks his head and presses kisses to her neck, her jaw. “I'm so glad you're okay,” she whispers fiercely. “Mulder, Jesus, Mulder… I thought…”

“We’re here,” Mulder says, kissing the top of his nose. “We're okay.” He sniffles loudly, wipes his face with the back of his hand. She fumbles to cup the side of her face with her hands and kisses him again, hard. “You're… you're okay, aren't you?” he whispers as she pulls away, tucking hair behind her ear. “You're not hurt? I swear to God, if they hurt you…”

Scully laughs wetly, her fingers framing his face. “I'm okay, Mulder,” she says, resting her forehead against his.

His eyes are shut, his cheeks wet. He brushes his thumb over her lips, reaches over and takes her hand, presses their palms together. There is no glass, just the two of them, skin and warmth. “God, Scully,” he says, his breath hot against her face. She brushes her nose briefly against his, his free hand large on her waist and her hand curled around his shoulders. He tilts his head and kisses her again, sleepily. “You have no idea,” he whispers, “how much I've missed the sound of your voice.”


End file.
